outgrowing quickbooks

How to Know When It’s Time to Kiss QuickBooks Goodbye

/0 Comments/in , /by

Many small to medium companies start with QuickBooks because of its easy accessibility and low entry point cost. However, as your company continues to grow, you will likely find yourself rapidly outgrowing its capabilities.  Many companies deal with the manual aspects of outgrowing QuickBooks because they don’t realize there is are better cost-effective solutions.  Below we will give you some things to consider when looking to switch and what the ROI will be once the switch is made. 

 

How to know when it is time to consider a change 

 

While QuickBooks is a great starting point there are many points in the journey that are signals that you are out growing this solution. As you are reading through the list, if you relate to one or more of the bullet points it is time to start considering a change in accounting solution.  

  • You or your team are having to create reports manually 
  • You are exporting data into Excel and manipulating the data to get reports instead of being able to run the reports out of your accounting system 
  • You are having trouble coding because of the extensive structure created in QuickBooks to track things separately 
  • You are manually entering or tagging many entries 
  • You are up late at night just trying to get the accounting work done 
  • Auditing is next to impossible because everything is done manually 
  • You cannot rely on some data as you suspect it contains errors  
  • You are tired of signing manual checks and storing paper documents in filing cabinets 

 

What you should consider when changing 

Once you have realized your company is ready for the next step in accounting solutions there are a few different aspects you should be considering. Below is a list of internal company considerations that will affect what you buy, how you buy it, and any additional software that will need to be integrated/purchased. 

  • Do you have an in-house finance team you want to grow or is the owner currently doing the finance work? 
  • What key metrics or indicators do you need to make business decisions and when is the ideal time to receive them?  
  • What reports do you currently produce? How long does it take it to produce them? If you could have more, what other reports would you want to have? 
  • Does your business currently have contracts? 
  • Can you currently see project profitability? If not, is being able to produce those financials important to growing your business? 
  • Can you currently predict resources and staffing levels?  

 

ROI you can expect with a cloud ERP 

Changing to a robust ERP can seem overwhelming from an implementation or upfront cost perspective. However, the return on investment is vast and long term can end up saving you money.  How you ask?  

  • Accurate reporting – eliminates errors from manual processing and reporting 
  • Accelerate financial team productivity – automated processes take away clerical work and let your team focus on analyzing the data and making decisions needed to grow the business 
  • Employee engagement and retention elevates – when your employees are able to do work that matters such as strategy, planning, and analysis, they are happier and will stay longer 
  • Better numbers quicker – with the ability to easily create new reports and run custom or standard reports fast you will have access to your financials in real-time and shorten your month-end close 
  • Reduce total overhead costs – with a cloud ERP system you will eliminate the clerical work that comes with Quickbooks and the workarounds. Therefore, you eliminate the overhead of clerical employees and overtime. You can focus on hiring on key employees that are pushing the company forward 

 

Fill out the form below to contact rinehimerbaker if you would like a free consultation to discuss the possibility of moving off QuickBooks. 



AICPA Supports Sage Intacct

Why CPA’s Agree with Sage Intacct Being the Only AICPA Endorsed GL Software

/0 Comments/in , , /by

The AICPA, otherwise known as the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, is a national professional organization that sets the standards for accountants in 143 countries. The AICPA oversees the accounting profession, sets standards, and oversees the uniform CPA exam. The organization defines professional accountancy through education requirements, ethical standards, professional standards, and alignment with the general public’s interest.  When the AICPA endorses an accounting software it means they have thoroughly vetted the product and have concluded that it meets the rigorous standards they hold for themselves and the accounting profession. Sage Intacct has become the first and only Accounting software to receive this recognition from the AICPA.  

 

Why is Intacct different? 

 

The Sage Intacct platform is meant to scale with a business no matter your size. It’s a one-stop-shop for businesses ranging from mom and pop shops to mid-market businesses. Your company can buy one software instead of having to change software as they grow. “Sage Intacct is truly a product with the accounting and finance team in mind. Every engineering dollar is put on how to make the accounting and finance team’s life better.”- Michael Garrison, Accountant for rinehimerbaker. Sage Intacct has focused on what they do best and has chosen to integrate with the best of the best vs. trying to create a suite. A great example of this mindset is the integration with Salesforce. Sage Intacct has made the strategic decision to align themselves and integrate with top SaaS offerings instead of trying to recreate them all. This allows their customers to get the best GL software and not sacrificing other software needs throughout the company. This also enables Sage Intacct to focus on their quarterly release schedule and making the accounting software the best it can be through consistent releases. There are integrations with multiple partners including CRMs, tax services, automated payments, time& expense, and more. 

Join our coffee break demo today! 

 

Why do CPAs agree? 

 

Michael has been working with Sage Intacct for over six years and agrees with the AIPCA’s endorsement of this GL software. “The accessibility of Sage Intacct from anywhere you may be, and the ease of use is phenomenal compared to other types of accounting systems such as QuickBooks which slows down what I can do for my customers,” said Garrison, CPA.  Once an accountant has gone through training for Sage Intacct GL the software is easy to navigate, and constantly working for them. The top features include flexibility and increased productivity. “Sage Intacct is the true definition of a cloud-based product. Customers get all the benefits of the cloud including operating in multiple sessions for various entities without closing and opening a program throughout the day” said Garrison, CPA. “The time savings alone are substantial. Overall, I find that the controls, the granularity, the ability to have segregation of duties built into the system, the auditability of transactions are all critical to accountants and why this software is above and beyond their competition.” 

 

To find out more about Sage Intacct, and all the capabilities Michael Garrison has referred to join rinehimerbaker and Sage Intacct for a coffee break demo any day this week at 9 am PST/ 12 pm ET. Click here now to register! If you would rather have a chat with a member of the rinehimerbaker team, please email ccottingham@rinehimerbaker.com.  

 

Join our coffee break demo today! 


Sage Intacct's Financial Reporting

Sage Intacct’s Financial Reporting Surpasses the Competition

/0 Comments/in , /by

Sage Intacct’s financial reporting surpasses the competition by providing unsurpassed visibility, granular transparency, and ease of use. Sage Intacct customers save 40+ hours per month on reporting alone and cut time spent checking data accuracy by 75%. Sage Intacct’s financial report writer delivers significant time savings and is unmatched by other cloud-based ERP solutions. 

 

Sage Intacct comes with 150 built-in financial reports. These reports can be executed exactly how they are built, or they can be customized to your unique business needs. A benefit of the built-in reports is that they can be duplicated and changed within as little as five minutes, saving time and effort. Sage Intacct also utilizes a memorize feature that allows a user to customize a report and to effortlessly save and schedule it with just a few clicks. 

 

Join us for a live demo today!

 

Sage Intacct features a multi-dimensional ledger system which is different than the typical linear ledger. A key benefit is the ability to track and report transaction data based on your company specific attributes. Examples include location, department, project, vendor, customer, or a customized attribute tailored to fit your needs. Sage Intacct is capable of handling not only financial data but also operational data. You have 8 dimensions that are easily sorted to slice and analyze your data every way needed to influence company decisions. rinehimerbaker has been able to change the reporting game for their customers with the multi-dimensions. For one customer we can track their restaurant, club, and total all in one P&L which was near impossible before Sage Intacct. Another customer can see all three business locations on one P&L as well as total business.  

 

The financial report writer also provides the ability to drill down within a report to the exact copy of an invoice giving visibility that is unmatched by other cloud ERP solutions. A user can easily click on an entry and see the copy of the original invoice allowing complete visibility into your company’s finances.  

 

Everything within Sage Intacct’s financial reporting is in real-time. When a transaction is uploaded a user can simply refresh their screen and it is immediately available to see. This eliminates wasted time waiting on items to become available and allows you to immediately react to your business.  

 

Sage Intacct’s financial report writer is not only a powerful tool that provides visibility in you your business it’s also easy to implement. There’s no need for an extensive implementation or an IT team which allows you to focus on your business. Sage Intacct requires zero coding, and like it was mentioned earlier, features over 150 pre-built reports! This ERP system allows everyone in your organization to confidently and quickly access information and reports they need to be successful. 

 

Overall, Sage Intacct’s financial reporting allows accounting to make better, faster decisions with complete confidence. 

 

Join us for a live demo today!


getting spreadsheets out of your organization

How to Stop Your Company’s Microsoft Excel Habit

/0 Comments/in , /by

One of the most prevalent, dangerous, and hard to break habits that exists at an organization is its peoples’ obsession with using Excel for everything. Even if the software has become smarter in the past years and has become more useful when paired with Microsoft Power BI, the continued use at your organization is creating more problems than it solves, and it’s important to break this bad habit before it’s too late. Read more

Sage Intacct Case Study

Medical Services Company Fuels Growth with Sage Intacct

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Fast-growing firms in highly regulated field don’t have time for mistakes. Not only is a delay or error going to slow your growth, but it could also expose you to major risks from regulators. For a company like this medical service organization, who has gained traction by being a leader in serving Medicare Advantage clients, they needed to not only handle the complex needs of insurers like Humana, but of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as well.

However, the company was using QuickBooks to maintain their accounting books for 10 entities. This held the company back, reduced visibility, and created risks that the company couldn’t afford. This is why they turned to rinehimerbaker: They needed a modern cloud accounting solution that could handle the needs as they grew and integrated with other leading solutions available for companies in the medical community.

To address this, rinehimerbaker migrated them from QuickBooks to Intacct with an integration with AvidXchange and ADP, which provided real-time visibility (cross-entity) into company status, accounts payable work flow and payment automation and an ADP direct payroll integration into the general ledger.

“As a CFO, for a growing, acquisitive company, I wear many hats. Each day is an adventure. We need to act fast and make decisions based on accurate data. When we spend time waiting and watching for data we lose on opportunities.

Our immediate benefits were: a time savings of 20 plus hours per month in report preparation and accounts payable process efficiency, we were able to deliver real-time status to our CEO to facilitate strategy decisions, automated integration with AvidXchange eliminating risk/mistakes while improving controls, integrated payroll saving time on inputs, most of all our accounting employees were happier, as they enjoyed using the system.”

Learn more about this company’s journey from spreadsheets to the cloud here, learn more about the dangers of spreadsheets and the people who blindly support them in our latest blog on Outgrowing QuickBooks, and learn more about how your medical practice can leverage the cloud for growth below.

The self destructive charge of the Excel Brigade

The Self-Destructive Charge of the Spreadsheet Brigade

/0 Comments/in , /by

“Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.” These words open one of the most famous poems in British History, written by Alfred Tennyson, which commemorated the loyalty, valor, and fortitude of the Light Brigade as they fought Russian forces in the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854.

What the Charge of the Light Brigade Has in Common with Your Excel Loyalists

Greatly outgunned, the men of the Light Brigade valiantly charged against Russian Artillery Forces, charging with as many as 600 men as they approached a well-fortified artillery unit.

Knowing this, the Charge of the Light Brigade is less a story of heroism, and more a story of incompetence. Poor communication resulted in losses of nearly 20% of the brigade, and war reporter William Russell documented the destruction, quoted, “our Light Brigade was annihilated by their own rashness, and by the brutality of a ferocious enemy.”

Now that you’ve gotten your history lesson for the day, you may be wondering what this has to do with finance, accounting, or a personal spreadsheet software invented some 131 years after the battle. The answer? These two things have more in common than you’d think.

Three Parallels between the Failed Charge and Your Company’s Spreadsheet Jockeys

There are many parallels between your Excel loyalists in the finance and accounting departments and the destined-to-fail charge that occurred on 25 October 1854. We’d like to explore a few of them below.

The Wrong Tools for the Job

The Light Brigade was a fast-moving reconnaissance and flanking unit, poorly suited for a frontal assault. While they were perfect for capturing Russian units attempting to carry away guns, the heavy brigade was better for attacking the fortifications (redoubts) held by the Russians.

Just as the light brigade was sent to do the heavy brigade’s job, many organizations are using Excel to accomplish tasks that Excel is not designed to handle—planning, analysis, closing the books, and more; where there’s a will, there’s a formula. This is a dangerous way of thinking akin to thinking that the light brigade would have been fine if it just had armor.

We’ve gone on the record saying that Excel has value for some purposes—like a personal budget or other simple tasks. However, there are many medium and large companies that attempt to stretch the software beyond its usefulness—often with dire results.

Blind Loyalty

Of course, The Charge of the Light Brigade documents another thing—loyalty. Valiantly, they rode “into the jaws of death, the mouth of hell,” facing surefire death.

If we could use one word to describe Excel loyalists, it would be loyal. As we discussed in our last blog on the software, “There’s a Red Badge of Courage that people wear when they stay up all night and work a spreadsheet to get something that they think is unique and artisanal.”

However, Loyalty as it pertains to Excel is by choice, while the Light Brigade was loyally following orders as they fought for the crown. There are many other, much more capable, less risky tools available to company. In fact, some Excel Loyalists are so stubborn that they will eschew a multi-million dollar implementation to use their software of choice.

A Huge, Costly Mistake

The Charge of the Light Brigade likely was the result of a misinterpreted order by one of the officers. People make mistakes. Some are costlier than others. The Charge of the Light Brigade stemmed from an unclear order and a sweeping motion of the arm, when Lord Raglan sent the following message:

“10:45. Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front — follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns — Troop Horse Artillery may accompany – French cavalry is on your left. R Airey. Immediate”

Unfortunately, it was delivered as “Tell Lord Lucan the cavalry is to attack immediately.”

Excel users make mistakes. Writers make mistakes, financial professionals make mistakes, and commanders make mistakes. We all make mistakes.

The difference of course, is this: If we write a typo on a blog, it doesn’t affect the other blogs, it won’t crash our website, and it will do little more than annoy a few of the sticklers among us.

In Excel, a misplaced decimal, an extra zero, or an improperly selected cell in a formula may not be caught for months, quarters, or years. As time passes, this one missed number creates a chain reaction, as concurrent spreadsheets are built upon this mistake, and the mistake becomes your truth.

With at least one error on nearly 90 percent of spreadsheets, the only time this might work is the rare possibility that two errors counteract each other.

Winning the Great War against Spreadsheets

There are many risks in pushing Excel beyond its limitations, and it appears that the business community is starting to realize this. With scathing articles on the failures of Excel being featured in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal in recent months, the future of the spreadsheet cavalry is in doubt.

Knowing this, as you push to shun spreadsheets from your financial processes and fight to increase accuracy and security by eradicating Excel, it’s vital to look at opportunities to sway Excel loyalists from the software—which is easier said than done.

As you push through 2018, you need to slowly convince the spreadsheet jockeys that Excel is not the right tool for the job by demonstrating to them just how user-friendly and intuitive an alternative can be (which seems less heartless than the alternative pitched by Forbes contributor Meta S. Brown).

The great war against spreadsheets will be long and arduous, and needs to be done subtly—because no one likes having a decision forced upon them. One of the best ways to convince the loyalists is to demonstrate how much time and effort they can save by giving them a chance to test drive a platform like Sage Intacct that can show them how much easier life could be.

Looking at the rest of 2018, we will be writing many more blogs on the pitfalls of using Excel for finance—as well as its partner in crime QuickBooks—so be sure to subscribe to our email list for all the latest.

Are you Passionate Enough about Excel to Lost Your Job?

Are You Passionate Enough about Excel to Lose Your Job?

/0 Comments/in , /by

If you’ve been reading the Wall Street Journal recently, there’s been a lot of commotion over a topic familiar to finance professionals: Microsoft Excel. What seemed to be a straightforward article about organizations veering away from the personal spreadsheet software quickly devolved into chaos, with tirades from finance professionals around the world in response to the article. Read more

QuickBooks has stopped working and must shut down

QuickBooks Has Crashed… Again: What it Means and What You Can Do about It

/0 Comments/in , /by

Contrary to popular belief, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are not always “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” For small business finance and accounting professionals, there is another phrase that strikes even more fear, anger and disdain: “QuickBooks has stopped working and must be shut down.”

“QuickBooks has stopped working and must be shut down.”

So how do you go about trying to tackle the problem? You run a clean reinstall. You download the diagnostic tool. You run a second clean reinstall. You attempt to run it without antivirus. You rename the .tlg file. You update it, you repair it, you download every tool in the book, and you still see those nine terrifying words: “QuickBooks has stopped working and must be shut down.”

It’s infuriating. It’s painful. It happens over and over and over. Those nine terrifying words are etched in your memory. Yet it’s all too common. You search the knowledge base for answers, and you see that you’re not alone. A quick Google search for the exact phrase “QuickBooks has Stopped Working” yields 959 results on the Intuit Community alone, and over 16,000 results across the web.

8 Common QuickBooks Crashes

So when is QuickBooks most likely to crash? As a company that has helped many companies outgrowing QuickBooks to make the move, we have heard many complaints about the platform.

  • On Startup
  • When Attaching a File
  • When Opening a File
  • When Clicking “Send Forms”
  • When Opening Check Register
  • When Opening a Company File/Changing from One Company to Another
  • When Emailing an Invoice
  • When Saving

However, it’s not only the crashes that present a problem. QuickBooks might run slowly in multi-user mode. It might run slowly if your audit trail gets too long. It might run slowly when your data file gets too big.

Reasons QuickBooks Crashes

There are many reasons for this. Some of the most commonly referenced ones on the Intuit Community:

  • Your computer is too old.
  • Your computer is too new.
  • Your data file is too big.
  • You like to protect your computer with anti-virus.
  • Your hard drive is corrupted.
  • Your data file is damaged/corrupt.
  • Your company name is too long.
  • Damaged program files or QuickBooks Desktop installation.

For a software that’s been around as long as QuickBooks has, there’s certainly a lot that can go wrong.

Two Reasons the Problem Isn’t Going Away

QuickBooks users around the world face the same struggles—especially as it pertains to the software crashing. Unfortunately, there are two reasons that you will continue to face problems.

QuickBooks was Built to be a Desktop Application

QuickBooks was built as a desktop application, which is why most of the reasons above revolve around computer and file-based issues. This is something that isn’t going to change. Anything from a change in operating system to the use of an anti-virus software can derail the entire QuickBooks desktop experience, causing crashes and other poor experiences.

It was initially thought that QuickBooks would address this when it introduced QuickBooks Online, but customers quickly found that it didn’t hold up to customer expectations. QuickBooks wasn’t built to be an online application, so when Intuit tried to rebuild QuickBooks for the web, it ended up putting up a web application that is lacking, according to G2Crowd reviews.

You’ve Outgrown QuickBooks

QuickBooks’ other fatal flaw—at least as it pertains to growing businesses, is that you’re asking it to do too much. Just as QuickBooks was designed to be a desktop software (i.e. run on a personal computer), QuickBooks was designed to make life easier for the small business owner. Again, we’ve said it on our blog before—QuickBooks is great for small businesses. It’s the larger businesses that push the software to (and past) its limitations.

While not always why the software crashes, a large file size is one of the main reasons that the software runs slowly. Also, as the file size grows, so does the risk and impact of the file being corrupted.

Barring an unfortunate turn of events, the latter of these two isn’t going to change—once you’ve outgrown QuickBooks, there’s no looking back.

Looking Forward: Moving Past QuickBooks

When your business was just starting up, adopting QuickBooks was almost a rite of passage. It was a welcome sign of your company’s growth and the accounting system met your needs for a time. But your business has kept growing, and now you’re seeing the limitations of the system you once depended on. QuickBooks simply doesn’t offer all the capabilities you need today—or tomorrow. The time has come, once again, for a change.

We invite you to learn more about additional warning signs, pain points, and opportunities for improvement from downloading our guide for companies outgrowing QuickBooks, which you can preview below.

Buy with Confidence in the Cloud

What Does It Mean to Buy with Confidence in the Cloud?

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Have you ever bought something, only to have buyers’ remorse? It’s a pretty terrible feeling—buying something, only to find out it didn’t hold up to your expectations or worse, feeling like you were the victim of a “bait and switch.” Maybe you made a decision without getting all of the facts, or maybe you were given information you thought to be accurate that turned out to be false (as discussed in our ‘Faux Cloud’ blog). Read more

Nonprofit Success Stories

Two Nonprofit QuickBooks Upgrade Success Stories

/0 Comments/in , , /by

QuickBooks, along with other entry-level accounting software, is amazing for businesses who are just starting out, but there comes a time for all organizations in which its manual processes, lack of visibility, and reliance on spreadsheets to get basic tasks done makes the software less and less affordable. While the actual costs haven’t increased, the labor costs have, and you’re on the verge of attempting to find another highly-paid accountant just to get the job done.

However, look at it this way. As great as it would be to have another likeminded person in the office, finding an accounting professional during the current war for talent and with the current skills gap in accounting is no easy task. Not to mention, recent data shows that it’s cheaper to upgrade than it is to hire.

This is why we would like to share with you a few success stories from companies just like yours who were feeling the limitations of their entry-level software and made the move to take their processes to the cloud with Intacct.

USA Fencing Gives QuickBooks the Black Card

For the most grievous penalties in fencing, the referee hands out what’s known as a black card, resulting in elimination from the match and event. For a nonprofit with growth in mind, QuickBooks wasn’t keeping up, holding the organization back and standing between the accountants and their goals.

With three major revenue streams, a need for specific control of restricted funds, and major funders with high expectations, USA Fencing was pushing QuickBooks beyond its limitations and needed to get free—and fast.

In this, USA Fencing began looking at next steps, evaluating Blackbaud and Intacct, letting the two vendors duel it out before declaring a winner.

“When it became clear that we needed a more powerful system to handle our nonprofit accounting needs, we evaluated both Intacct and Blackbaud,” said Keri Khan, director of finance and business services at USA Fencing. “Intacct was without a doubt the best choice for us because of its flexible report writing capabilities, its accessibility in the cloud, and its overall ease-of-use across all our key financial workflows.”

Today, USA Fencing has been able to continue growing without pain, increasing productivity and gaining peace of mind. Among the key wins that Intacct has provided to USA Fencing:

  • Cutting month-end reporting times in half.
  • Doubling the speed of expense reimbursements for athletes, employees, and contractors.
  • Streamlined purchasing workflows, reducing the time and effort needed to make simple or complex purchases.

Learn more about USA Fencing’s move to the cloud and read the entire case study here.

White Ribbon Alliance Leverages Intacct for Multi-Currency Accounting

With over 150 countries in its international coalition and an increasingly diverse funding portfolio, White Ribbon had to meet numerous fund accounting and compliance requirements, and found that QuickBooks wasn’t able to keep up. In fact, QuickBooks was holding White Ribbon Alliance back so much that they were facing a 2 to 3 month lag in the financial close process.

When comparing solutions White Ribbon Alliance looked at Intacct and NetSuite, deciding on Intacct for its ability to handle multiple currencies and entities.

Intacct’s cloud-based system ended up as a clear choice over NetSuite because of its impressive multi-entity and multi-currency capabilities, as well as the great experience we had with the Intacct team who showed a clear commitment to ongoing product enhancement and customer success.

White Ribbon turned to Intacct to streamline manual fund accounting processes and increase productivity. The process improvements provided by Intacct enabled White Ribbon Alliance to add new countries and services without any additional financial headcount, simplify its global business management, automate key financial processes, speed its monthly financial close process, and improve business visibility. These streamlined processes have also cut out a 2 to 3 month lag in the organization’s financial close process. Read the entire case study here.

Ready to Learn More?

At rinehimerbaker, we are committed to helping growing companies and nonprofits to handle their needs with cloud accounting. We would love to speak with you about your next steps and provide insight on how to proceed. Preview our guide to outgrowing QuickBooks below, download the entire whitepaper here, and learn even more by reading “Life After QuickBooks,” a guide from our friends at Intacct.